In the New Year
by onelastchapter
Summary: The biggest lesson that Lily's Mum had ever tried to impress upon Lily was that forgiveness was the key to life. It was a hard and irritating trait, but important. Great Auntie represented forgiveness to Lily's Mum.


**A/N: for the Chaser 2 for the Appleby Arrows. (quote) by Friedrich Nietzsche, (word) highlands, (word) begone; bunny for the build a bear challenge; dark things challenge, the dark; 2015 New Years Millionaire, kidfic; better writer competition, round 1 combine generations.**

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><p>"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."<p>

-Friedrich Nietzsche

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><p><em>I was right, this really wasn't going to be any fun. <em>

Those were Lily Luna's exact thoughts on the first of January, 2014. Those thoughts, now a year stale, still applied.

The Dursleys, forever peppy and bright, believed that the New Year was some sort of magical day where everyone's big red reset button was routinely hit on the midnight of December 31st.

It wasn't just a muggle thing as James had pointed out.

Lily had two brothers. Both weren't all that nice and neither were anything like the other. Albus was of the sporty and outgoing kind. Maybe it was because he was the prized middle child.

Lily's older cousin, Janice, showed Lily some sci-en-ti-ff-ik research a couple years ago that claimed middle children were always the most well rounded. Lily didn't believe Janice when she told her that, but looking back, perhaps it was true.

James was more reserved. He joked around mercilessly with family but with other people, he tended to revert and retract. He was smart but not much of a people person.

-0-

"I want that one!"

Petunia Even's rarely got anything. she was the older plain sister or a bright personable witch. she didn't get much nor did she expect much. But walking, alone with her parents while Lily was at school, Petunia stopped at a window display. Alone on the shelf was a perfect violet cup decorated with the Scottish highlands and small but delicate petunias.

She had never wanted anything as much as she did that cup.

It was everything that she wasn't.

The violet cup was petite, small, comely, and perfectly alone, a little plain but shining all the same.

was it wrong for her to have aspired to be a cup.

That day,when her parents refused, Petunia played a card that she didn't know that she had in her arsenal.

Crying, loud obnoxious sobbing, _Mummy, is it because I'm not like Lily? Why can't I have it? Lily got stuff. Do you love her more?_

Perhaps it worked because it was true and they were feeling guilty, or maybe they really loved her too.

Petunia in her adult life, remembered it as the latter.

-0-

Lily's parents believed that that the New Years were somehow magical as well. They were about the 'fresh' or 'new' start that the holiday represented.

That was perhaps why Lily found herself smushed in the back of the Dursley's mini-van between Janice, her cousin, and James. January first 2015, Lily was seven and the cycle was starting over again.

Every year Great Auntie Petunia would great them, order Lily around, criticize everything and everyone, give them twenty pence, and send them on their way.

This is year, however, something in the cycle would break.

Perhaps it was because Great Auntie was simply too frail to continue playing her designated part and keep it together or maybe it was Lily's fault.

The biggest lesson that Lily's Mum had ever tried to impress upon Lily was that forgiveness was the key to life. It was a hard and irritating trait, but important. Great Auntie represented forgiveness to Lily's Mum.

The Dursleys had picked up the Potters from the train station with their blinding smiles and jolly jokes. They, like the Potters, were dressed in their Sunday best. The tulle in Lily's skirt crinkled and cracked with every bump and jerk. To say that Lily was unhappy was the understatement of the year.

Great Aunt Petunia, just as Albus was of the sporty sort, was of the old sort.

She lived in a sad old house. Her husband had died and now all that was left was the bone thin woman and her spot less walls. Her knuckles were perpetually red and raw from most likely scrubbing dirt off her garden grass. It wasn't assuming to say that Lily despised the shriveled hag.

Lily's Dad and Uncle laminated in the car over Great Auntie's obsessive tendencies, laughing in cue. Aunt Karen laughed along, knowing the impossible woman would have most likely done most if not all of her husband's insane tales. Ginny Potter, however, sat, just as smushed as Lily, with her lips pursed and eyes narrowed.

When the Potters and Dursleys entered number four Privite Drive Great Auntie barely said hello before she had them take off their muddy shoes. The sludge that they had trekked in was gone in a single swipe of her trustworthy rag.

They were then promptly lead to the parlor to be served tea after the coats had been stowed away and pleasantries were exchanged. Great Auntie would call for the mums, Janice, and Lily to join her in the kitchen. The boys were never called in and at first she despised them. They didn't have to listen to the old gossip of old people.

Though Dad had explained it one day last year. James and Albus weren't having the grand time that Lily had deducted. Instead, they were sitting, quiet as mice, under threat, and not daring to make a noise.

Unlucky Tomas, Janice's brother, was forced into silence too by his father. Unlucky because Uncle Dudley was a huge man with arms to match. Tomas, as Albus recounted, was constantly trapped under the great bear claw of his father, pinned to Uncle Dudley's left side.

For Tomas it wasn't just the spoken threat at the beginning during the car ride over but one that was experienced through out. Lily, as her Mum had explained, was to be in the kitchen setting up the trays, because Great Auntie was an old fashioned kind of woman. Great Auntie believed in make up, skirts, and house work.

Great Auntie was a lonely woman who had burned all her ties. Poor Janice and Tomas had to visit the Ancient old bat more then just on the New Years.

Lily learns this when she drops the purple cup.

Made with bone china and gold, the purple cup was dainty and delicate. Depicting the Scottish highlands and petunias, the cup was a gift from Great Auntie's mother.

Last year she dropped a vase while trying to move it. When she did Great Auntie laughed it off and told her a story. She even said that Lily was 'just like her father'. That moment had been potentially the time that Lily had liked Great Auntie the most.

So, lily looked up from the shattered cup with a hopeful glint in her eye. She's unprepared for the ugly set of Great Auntie's thin paper lips.

Great Auntie screamed.

A tea pot finds its way to the tile when Petunia Evens Dursley flings it away in her haste to check if it's _true_. She _thinks_ that she heard the sound but she _needs_ to _know_. Seeing is knowing.

And Great Aunt Petunia saw.

Lily cowered from the fury. There was nothing else in the world that sacred Lily more then in that moment in that she looked up from her Great Auntie's slippered feet and at her face. The contours and lines rearranged to farm a hellish image. Lily didn't see Petunia Evens Dursley anymore. she saw a woman that the world had forsaken, that hope had abandoned, and with the shattered little purple tea cup, who's parents and unloved sister were begone.

The commotion caused the boys to poke their bored heads in and linger. Uncle Dursley with his calming words and Lily's father who fingered his wand for he saw it too.

"Petunia, dear," Aunt Karen started before a bang resounded and Lily's Great Aunt fell hard on the floor, stunned. Her arm was out, She would have, as Lily saw when she would later go through her childhood memories, hit Lily with the tea tray.

Lily's mum stood absolutely still, wand out. "We're leaving." She said and that was that. They cleaned up the mess and fixed the cup. Lily's dad didn't argue further and kept his head down and strapping them into the Dursley's car. They didn't talk about the incident after that.

Or rather, they didn't talk about it with Lily.

But they did talk about it. Albus would hug Lily and she would lean on James as they huddled under James' covers, listening to the screaming about the 'wicked woman' and their fathers 'delusional sense of people'.

-You might have forgiven her, Harry but I sure as hell don't-

-She's not who she was, you think that this is easy for me?-

-but you dare drag _my_ children on for the sake of your little love and forgive bull shit-

-She's family! What if this was Molly!-

-You can forgive her all you want but she almost hit Lily-

-She had dementia-

-SHE HIT MY BABY, she was going to hit our baby!-

The Potters stay at home the next January 2016.

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><p>Forgiveness is easy to say but not always easy to do. You could say that you forgive all you want but saying it won't make it true.<p>

Lily returns the next January first on the year 2017 with her two brothers and parents.

They rode in the Dursley's beat up car with the happy relatives, telling jokes and stories. They said their hellos and gave their kisses with their shoes in the doorway of number four. Ginny Potter pursed her lips and didn't leave Lily's side. They prepared and drank tea, not mentioning the whole purple cup on the highest shelf of the glass case. They didn't mention January 2015 and Great Auntie happily gave her share of dated gossip.

Then it was done.

The visit was over.

The Potters gave their kisses and hugs, leaving in the Dursley car.

No one had forgiven Great Auntie, or at least none of the Potters had. But New Years Day was a time for forgiveness. Great Auntie was dying. Her son knew it, Lily's Mum knew it, really, everyone knew it.

They kept it up every year, waiting for the old woman to die.

Which eventually she did, leaving a spotless house with pristine walls and floors to fall into disarray.

There was a pain that Lily couldn't place when she returned to the house in year 2019. They were finally selling the house. All the papers were in order, all they needed to was to sweep up the dust.

Two years ago, dust in number four was unheard of. Now, the dust mites were common place, gathered on counters and glass. The purple cup looked pale and small in the glass display but it was nothing as Lily remembered it.

The enchantment that had been holding it together was slowly falling apart, threads of magic slowly unraveling. The cracks were reappearing and the paint was chipping.

Lily turned around with her hands in her pockets. She wasn't crying. She wasn't sad. Great Auntie was dead and all that was earthy left was a pathetic tea cup and an aging home.

Lily walked back to her family in the kitchen where they laughed with a final cup of tea.

Forgiveness isn't fun. It's cheep but uncommon. Lily forgot about the purple cup ages ago. She didn't remember much about it. It was simply a cup that she broke.

But it wasn't Lily Luna who had to forgive.

It never was.


End file.
